8 Awesome Gadgets — For When You’re Living in a Van, Down by the River

For decades, we used our cars’ cigarette lighters to actually light cigarettes. It was a smelly affair, but no one was yet complaining about second-hand smoke. Then tobacco became passe, and gadgets became much more mobile. From the CD Walkman with its 12V adapter to modern smartphone chargers, consumer electronics now make ready use of the electricity surging through our automobile power ports.

But have you looked at what can be plugged into your car’s cigarette lighter lately? The options are amazing -- you can now take a full complement of lifestyle accessories on a camping trip. Or, in a pinch, you could use your vehicle’s cigarette lighter to power the amenities of a happy (albeit cramped and slightly downmarket) home.

Coleman Rechargeable Portable Blender

Nothing fulfills one’s recommended daily allotment of fruit and vegetables quite like a smoothie. It’s difficult to find a quality smoothie stand along the highways and byways of our fast-food nation, but Coleman comes to the rescue with its Rechargeable Portable Blender.

This $50 blender will handily crush ice and various fruits and vegetables with ease, and margaritas (as evidenced in our video) are just a few powerful blending adventures away. Coleman says the unit will dole out between 20 and 30 pitchers of drinks per charge -- more than enough to provision your very own smoothie stand at a rest stop. The blender can be charged via a household outlet, or, more apropos to our traveling and domestic needs, a vehicle’s 12-volt port. Let the bananaberry flow!

Black & Decker Auto Pivot Vac

Car interiors take a beating. From family pets shedding all over the seats, to the colony of french fries that resides on the cabin floor, most vehicles need a seriously good vacuuming. This is where the cyclonic power of the $69 Black & Decker Auto Pivot Vac comes in. The Pivot Vac will make short work of these messes, and you won’t even need an extension cord trailing from the wall outlet in your house.

The 12V-powered vacuum has a 10-position pivoting head with an extension that adds a hose to the end. With all those positions and reach power, sucking up sand, dirt and fast-food straw wrappers should be a literal breeze.

Car Cozy 2

You want the windows and sunroof open, but your passenger is cold. End the ongoing battle for climate control with an electric blanket that plugs into your car.

The Car Cozy 2 wraps your guest in the warm embrace of cloth and electricity. The blanket ships with a 7-foot-long cord and has an auto-off mode to help reduce the chances of sleep sweats. At 58 inches by 42 inches, the cozy is large enough to wrap one person up like a burrito. You could even drape it on top of two people in a convertible, and stare up at the moonlight. Romance!

Wagan Deluxe Ergo Comfort Rest

After about three hours on the road, a car seat can transition from “basically comfortable” to the rolling equivalent of a wooden park bench. The aches, the pains, the inability to feel your toes -- it all adds up to a miserable drive to grandma’s house.

Enter the $60 Wagan Deluxe Ergo Rest back massager. Its five massaging motors and heat wave therapy promises relief from the pain, and you don’t even need to get out of the car to stretch your legs. Use it for long drives, or to turn your mobile home -- you know, the one down by the river -- into a funky-freaky bachelor pad. The massager works in the car, or you can plug it into a wall outlet with an included AC adapter.

Sceptre 16-Inch HDTV

Enjoy your travels -- or days by the riverside -- in high-definition. Sceptre’s 16-inch HDTV plugs directly into your vehicle, letting you bask in the glory of HD anywhere. The $200 television has two HDMI inputs, so if you come across a Blu-ray player and videogame console that also plug into a cigarette lighter, you’re set. Of course you could get a DC-to-AC converter for those peripherals, but that would be like cheating on your new cigarette-lighter lifestyle.

Burton Digital Stove To Go

A steady diet of truck-stop hamburgers my appease your initial hunger pains, but eventually those burgers will come back to haunt you. But luckily a home-cooked (er, car-cooked) meal is only a few hours away thanks to the Burton Digital Stove To Go.

The $45 slow cooker will reach temperatures up to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and includes a steamer tray for vegetables, dumplings or fish. The stove comes with a recipe book filled with delicious road-trip meals, like macaroni and cheese, catfish stew and beef tostada pie. Each recipe takes about two hours to cook, so just make sure your destination is two hours away before getting your rolling chef on.

Spotlight Rechargeable Flashlight

Cars never break down on well-lit streets. They almost always stop running on scary dirt roads -- or on long stretches of highway surrounded by cornfields and the serial killers who live in them. It’s in these situations where you need a flashlight the most. Too bad the only one you have has been rolling around in the trunk, and only provides five minutes of light before it fades into uselessness.

The $20 Spotlight Rechargeable Flashlight will not only be ready the moment your car runs out of warranty coverage, but it will also be easy to find because it’s nested in your car’s cigarette lighter. It’s always there, always charging, and always ready to pierce the darkness with a beam of light. And don’t mock the small size -- this bad boy is deceptively bright.

Wagan Personal Thermo-Fridge/Warmer

Forget the bags of ice and the styrofoam cooler that smells of dead fish. The $110 Wagan Personal Thermo-Fridge/Warmer will cool -- or heat -- anything you can cram into its 10.5-liter space. Two cup holders and a padded armrest will let you enjoy your beverages in style. It’s a bit too big to use as a center console in cars, but vans and trucks could benefit from this cooler on the go.